


Control Freak Out

by Bionic (Vexza)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, Unbeta'd, but theyll be ok, the bots get really upset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4292823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexza/pseuds/Bionic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to S02E05: "Spellbound". The bots have a nasty reaction when they awake from the trances the cellphones put them in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Control Freak Out

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about how general fear of the quintessons and what they did to Cybertron (ie enslaved the entire planet) affects cybertronian society and thinking, and as I was rewatching some of Rescue Bots I realized, hey, organic species dampening individual thought in order to use living beings as machines? That's kind of an unfortunate parallel, isn't it? I may write a more lighthearted fic along this theme about the bots being afraid of seafood. But yeah, I think cybertronians would feel REALLY strongly about mind control and emotional dampening; thus, this speculative fic.
> 
> This starts to depart from episode canon about when Boulder gets shaken out of his trance, but only fully departs at the very end of the episode when Boulder and Cody destroy the cell tower. Oh, and this is my first RB fanfiction! (how???)

_The project is the priority, and the priority is the project. The Project is the Priority, Priority Project. Project Priority._

_Estimate depth; 5 feet._

_The project is the priority. Priority is the project, project priority. Estimate depth; 1 foot. Priority is the project. Priority. The project is the- resource uncovered, commence extraction._

_Project is the priority, incoming object estimate weight priority estimate time of impact 3 seconds evasive actions project-_

The massive lump of gold smashed directly into Boulder, his processor too laden with the hypnotic repeating message to do proper threat assessment. He grunted, finding himself thrown a few feet to the side, several objects in his cab flying through his open window and smashing on the newly excavated ground beside him.

 _Wow_. He transformed and rubbed his head, the sudden ache in his processor much more painful than the blow he had just taken to the side. _I know I'm not agile, but really..._

Wait a second. When was the last time he had had an independent thought like that? He stiffened, and slowly lowered his arm to his side. He tried to take stock of his surroundings without moving his head too much, optics flicking from side to side and various scanners sweeping the area swiftly. What was going on? He remembered coming to Blossom Vale, he remembered being ordered to dig, he remembered digging and excavating, but he didn't remember _why_ he had done it. There was just a constant drone in his audials and in his processor, and he couldn't _think_...

His scanners lit upon one of the objects that had been dislodged from his cab, and he turned bodily to face it. A cellphone? Sure, it was odd looking, but humans had so many different models of the things, he couldn't be expected to be familiar with every single one of them... Wait, no. He _remembered._

He remembered Graham, who had been acting so odd like his brother and father, climbing into his cab. He remembered how he had assured Boulder that everything would make _sense_ soon, told him that he would understand the importance of the 'project' soon, and placed the slim yellow phone on his dash. And then, after that... nothing but that white noise and _obedience._

Boulder craned his neck up to where he had determined Chase and Heatwave to be, a cold feeling creeping through his systems. Heatwave had apparently paused to check Boulder's status after being smashed into by... well, a boulder, but as soon as the green bot made eye contact with him he turned and started making his way back down the makeshift ramp. A little further above him on the ledge, Chase was assisting Blades with an airlift, a huge chunk of gold clamped in the helicopter's scoop claw.

And all three of them looked _dead._

Well, not really dead. Not literally. But it sort of felt like that. As Boulder watched his team move, he realized that this is what humans expected them to be like. Mechanical, precise. This is what they tried to be like when other people were watching, though Boulder felt that they rarely succeeded. They were too full of emotion and moving parts, and though they masqueraded themselves successfully, they could never fully achieve the programmed feel of the other robots of Griffin Rock. They weren't robots. They were living creatures.

But right now, they looked just like robots. They moved just like robots. It was wrong- it felt wrong. Boulder glanced back down at the broken phone beside him and felt a revulsion deep in his chest that was unlike any disgust he had probably ever felt for anything before in his life.

"The marina?" Chief said, far above the bot. Boulder fixed his gaze on the human. They were hypnotized too, then. The ugly feeling in his chest intensified, though some part of him felt relief at the confirmation that the Burnses had not done this evil to them willingly. "Doc, do not let Cody take a boat off the island."

The nastiness was suddenly replaced by fear. "Cody." He whispered without thinking. Cody must not have been affected by the phones yet- but, apparently, Doc Greene and probably the other inhabitants of the island had. Somehow the small human had managed to evade his family, the bots, and Doc Greene, and he was still fighting the phones' control out there somewhere.

Boulder felt a flash of pride and warmth at the thought that Cody had been trying to save them this whole time, and he tried to hold onto that feeling. He had to find him.

 

\---

 

By the time the sun had started to make its fall towards the horizon, Boulder had located Cody, and had the boy safely seatbelted into his cab. The fact that he had been able to find Cody as yet unaffected by the cellphones' influence was bringing him no small amount of happiness, and he did his best to hold onto that feeling. Though Cody had done little else besides formulate a plan to free their family, Boulder could sense that the kid was shaken from the whole ordeal, and he didn't really need to know that the big robot that was trying to protect him was just as upset as he was, if not moreso. No. Boulder thought happy thoughts.

Happy thoughts. Boulder hummed to himself pleasantly as they made their way back towards Blossom Vale. Happy thoughts were hard to come by today.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came back to the site that he and the other bots had been excavating all day. A cursory sweep of the ground before him revealed none of the other bots' signatures, and he couldn't detect any sign of the elder Burnses either. Discomfort began to unsettle his circuits. He didn't like this at all.

"They must be in the pit." Is what he said aloud to Cody, not 'I can't face my team like this'.

"Okay." Cody nodded once, his young face creased seriously. "We jump down there and crush dad's phone, and then he can help us with the others."

It wasn't a bad plan- Boulder grunted in affirmation. While he moved to set Cody's plan in motion, he simultaneously began to formulate several backup plans. Cody was on the right track: they needed another human free if they wanted to dislodge the phones from the other bots' cabs or destroy the ones the humans had without hurting them, and Chief would likely recover the quickest and take charge of the situation. If he couldn't reach Chief, however, he suspected that Graham was the most likely to be out in the open of any of the humans, considering his ride had gone rogue, so if plan A failed, he could try to break Graham's phone-

With barely a whisper of displaced air and moving branches, Boulder felt Heatwave appear directly to his right. Chase appeared with equal uncanny stealth, Blades closing ranks on his left. Boulder froze, more than a little creeped out by the sudden appearance of his hypnotized teammates. Cody gasped, and Boulder's spark sank a little.

 _Or we could do this_. He thought to himself, scanning his team warily. He knew he could hold Heatwave off in a pinch, if he really applied himself, but Chase was definitely too fast for him, and there was no way he could take all three of them at once. Plus, Blades had a bad tendency to fight dirty, and judging by the cold severity in their optics, Boulder didn't think any of them would pull any punches if it came to a fight.

Even though roughly three quarters of his threat assessments were telling him to flee, Boulder found he couldn't move. Chief was saying something, but it fell on deaf audials. He couldn't look away from the other bots' faces. Who had done this to them? Why? Dread and desperation roiled through him. Who would do this?

"Boulder, run!"

Cody's voice snapped him back to the present, seconds before Heatwave closed in on him. He couldn't let them hurt Cody. If any of the humans were hurt while they were like _this_... no, it would be too much. He turned and fled.

His flight through the vale was mostly a blur of trees and buds closing for the night. Distantly, he lamented the fact that most of the beautiful greenery had been destroyed by his own hands only hours before, but there were more pressing issues at hand. Most notably, a proximity alert pinging in his processor that indicated Chase was gaining on him. Blades's searchlight bathed him in stark, artificial whiteness that made him want to slip back into the obscurity of the twilight forest more than anything. He didn't want to fight them.

"Boulder!" Cody interrupted his thoughts, excited. "Look! The cell tower!"

He did look, and saw immediately the tower in question. It was high above them, on the cliff, but he recalled that the road up to it wasn't so far away from where they were now.

"If we knock that out, we'll disable the signal for every phone on the island!"

"That's right!" He blurted, and immediately transformed and raced towards where he remembered the road to be. That was a great idea! He would be beaming in pride at the little human if he hadn't already tucked him safely into his chest and wasn't running for his life at the moment.

His treads transitioned from mud to asphalt nearly seamlessly, and he veered onto the road towards the cell tower. Chase and Heatwave were close behind him, but they couldn't take on their vehicle modes until they reached the pavement. Ultimately, though, Boulder's headstart was for naught- the two were just too fast for him. They rolled up on either side of him while Blades kept the light steady. In his seat, Cody clenched his jaw and gripped his seatbelt a little tighter.

Each of the two vehicles took turns nudging the bulldozer, but at this speed neither of the two were heavy enough to run him off course without spinning out themselves. Their ineffective ramming gave Boulder plenty of time to be horrified by the energy they were putting out, though.

Their EM fields were all sorts of wrong. It was one thing to have your field _restrained_ , and another thing entirely for it to have absolutely no emotional data within it. It was like their processors had been completely detached from their sparks, and their fields were just full of the same static that had filled his head when the cellphone had been jacked into his dash. It wasn't right. He felt a chill run up his chassis, and it was all he could do not to shiver.

He tried to reach out with his own field, partially out of desperation and partially out of hope, but the police car and firetruck were already pulling ahead of them and racing towards the cell tower. The searchlight beamed on him finally let up as Blades flew to join them.

 _They're going to try to head me off_. He thought. Grimly, he picked up speed as the tower came in sight. Well, he may not be much of a fighter, but he _was_ an incredibly solid mass of metal, and he was about to use that to his full advantage. The three hypnotized bots prepared to face him head on, but Boulder had other plans.

"Hang on, Cody!" He shouted, and the kid obligingly held onto his seat as the bulldozer transformed back into root mode and _flew_ over the heads of his teammates.

 _Now_ that _was surprisingly graceful_. He thought disjointedly moments before his shoulder slammed into the side of the cell tower.

Metal bars bent and _snapped_ as the 'dozer smashed into them. Electrical cables ripped free and flew dangerously through the air, crackling with power for a few tense seconds before failsafes shut them off. Steel shrieked and creaked as the tower began to fall, and crashed deafeningly to the ground only a few short moments after impact.

Boulder rolled off the mangled remains of the tower, shaking off the ache in his side and the ringing in his head. He hoped beyond hoped that Cody's plan had worked and that they were _free_ of the vile technology that had entranced them, but-

When he turned to look, there was a brief moment of defeat as the bots continued to advance on them and Boulder feared their plan hadn't worked- but, just a moment later, each of the three pulled up short and adopted three distinctly different expressions of confusion. Boulder (metaphorically) breathed a sigh of relief, and he felt tension in his frame he didn't even know he had release. Based on the sounds of befuddlement emanating from their cabs, Boulder suspected that the humans had also been released from their bonds.

Cody crowed loudly in victory. "That was great, Boulder! We did it!"

The bulldozer couldn't help but grin, and he opened his cab to let the youngest Burns out. "Destroying the cell tower was your idea, Cody. I just had the horsepower to get it done."

Cody hopped out of his seat and onto Boulder's open palm, and quickly twisted around to beam up at him. He beamed back, then set the human carefully on the ground.

The other Burnses had climbed down to the ground as well, and were exchanging generally confused glances. Kade in particular looked especially dazed, though Boulder thought privately that that was just because he was Kade. Cody rushed over to them, and Chief automatically opened his arms for his youngest to run into a hug.

They exchanged words, assured each other they were okay, and generally just tried to make sense of things. Apparently, they didn't remember anything that had happened during the ordeal. Boulder shifted his gaze up to his fellow cybertronians.

 _But we do_.

Boulder chalked it up to differences in human and 'bot neural pathways. While the humans had essentially blacked out, the bots remembered the static, the film of obedience, and the destruction they had caused over the last several hours. And, as Boulder's spark sank lower into his chest, he had to watch as his team came to terms with what had happened to them.

Heatwave looked like he didn't know whether to hit someone or to run away. Considering everything that had just happened, Boulder felt that those were both reasonable reactions, at least from Heatwave's point of view. It was sort of troubling, though- he watched as Heatwave clenched and unclenched his fists and stared down at the humans.

The Burnses hadn't done this to them. Whoever had created the phones had hypnotized them too, and it wouldn't be fair to persecute the family for anything they had done while under their influence. Heatwave seemed to realize this too, and he backed off at the cost of having no place to direct his rage. His jaw locked, and he froze with the sheer force of the tension in his body. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself.

Blades seemed mostly dazed. He was slowly looking all around himself, as if taking in his surroundings for the first time in weeks, not hours. As Boulder watched, the helicopter felt his own face, arms, and chest, as if he needed physical confirmation that all his body parts were his own. As he confirmed limb by limb that he had not lost any parts in his trance, panic slowly grew in his optics, his EM field starting to fluctuate erratically.

Despite Blades's oncoming meltdown, Chase was having by far the most visceral reaction of any of them. Moments after he had let Chief and Graham out of his cab, his entire chassis had started to shake. He optics were several clicks brighter than normal, and though he was attempting to keep his field restrained, Boulder could practically hear its discomfited humming from here. He was obviously trying to control his reaction and failing bit by bit, and Boulder just couldn't blame him for that. Being a prisoner in your own body wasn't exactly a fun experience, especially when you were Chase or Heatwave and didn't know how to process your emotional response to being turned into a puppet.

"Boulder." Graham's voice came to him, with the tone of someone who has had to repeat themselves several times. The green bot looked down and met the concerned looks of the entire Burns family.

"Huh?" He replied, his own voice sounding distant in his audials.

"Are you okay?" Graham repeated, taking a step towards him.

Boulder took a step back without really thinking about it, and Graham drew up short in surprise. "Uh." He said quite eloquently to the human. Privately, he cursed at himself. Graham didn't do this to him, but he couldn't help but remember the engineer slotting the phone into his dashboard. He didn't do it on purpose. He didn't know. Boulder's optics flicked up to the other bots almost pleadingly, looking for help where there was none.

Seeing Boulder's glance, the other humans turned to look for their own partners. This only served to worsen the respective emotional states of each of the bots. Chase folded his arms over his chest tightly, like he was trying to keep his own body from falling apart, and Heatwave simply stared wide-eyed back at them without answering any of their questions.

And Blades, who could only keep himself from sobbing by screaming, yelled hoarsely, "No! Don't look at me, I'm a mess!", and covered his face.

 _That_ caused the Burnses to erupt with concern, which, while it touched Boulder deeply in a positive way, was not exactly helpful.

They just didn't understand, despite having been hypnotized right along with them. They didn't understand being called a machine, they didn't understand Heatwave's constant tirade against being forced to act like a robot, and they didn't understand the encroaching fear that maybe, just maybe, despite all of the facts you know and the people you love, maybe everything anyone back home ever said about organics was true and you were stuck on a whole planet full of them with just-

Chase made an odd noise deep in his vocal processor, like he was in physical pain, and turned quickly on his heel, transformed, and sped off. This seemed to shake Heatwave out of his frozen state, and he turned to watch the police car go. Maybe he wasn't really sure what to do with himself at this moment, but helping Chase? That was an acheivable goal, more attainable than trying to regain some sense of personal control. That was something he could do. He glanced at Boulder and Blades once each before he too transformed to follow the cop car; an invitation to come along if they needed.

The Burnses stared after them in abject shock. Boulder felt guilty. It didn't seem fair to suddenly lose it and leave the humans in the lurch, but at the same time, he didn't really want to sit and explain the legacy of every sentient race in the galaxy thinking his people were mindless machines- some going so far as to try to make that lie a reality. Maybe they were reacting irrationally, but sometimes you just had to sit back and react naturally and let your emotions run their course before you could begin to feel like yourself again.

Blades laid down in the dirt, the most pathetic expression twisting his features. Boulder's spark lurched. He wanted to hug him. Dani, who was much closer, carefully stepped around Blades's outstretched arm and laid a hand on his chest. His optics refocused on his partner.

"I'm not a machine." He said, unspoken urgency lacing his tone.

"We know." Dani said warmly, without demanding explanation.

Boulder looked down when he felt a hand on his knee, and he was met with a smile from both Graham and Cody. He vented warm air as a sort of sigh to calm himself, and he felt the twisting disgust at having been pulled out of his own head lessening slightly. The Burnses understood.

It would be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry about Chase and Heatwave, they'll come back and be fine too! May write a short companion piece to this, but I think it's fine for now. Hope you liked!


End file.
